Brian David Johnson: Intel's Guide to the Future

Alex Knapp
,
Forbes Staff
I write about the future of science, technology, and culture.

Brian David Johnson. (Credit: Intel)

"My job is to look 10 to 15 years out and come up with a vision as to how people will interact with computers."

That's how Brian David Johnson, Intel's first and so far only futurist, describes what he does in a nutshell. I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with him the other day, discussing the future, technology, and what Johnson refers to as "futurecasting" - which, he adamantly states, is not about predicting the future. But rather determining a vision of the future that he and Intel can then work to build.

"It sounds science-fictiony," he laughs. "But it's ultimately pragmatic. Chip designs have lead times of 5-10 years, so it's important to have an understanding of how people will want to to interact with computers. I'm literally working on chips for 2020 right now."

Developing a Vision of the Future

I obviously couldn't let it lie there. What do you take into account when planning the future? The answer is both intriguing and quite unlike most futurists I know. Johnson's first stop is the social sciences. He works with Dr. Genevieve Bell, a cultural anthropologist who has been at Intel since 1998. Their teams work with ethnographers, social scientists, and others to understand the current state of the culture and try to figure out where it's going.

The next step is then looking at the hardware. Johnson and his team work with computer scientists to look at the current state of the art in hardware, software, and algorithms, as well as the research coming up. The tech data is meshed with the social sciences data to answer a simple question: how can we apply this technology to capture people’s imaginations and make their lives better?

"At that point," Johnson says. "I start to look at the trends. Which is really where most people start."

Combining all of this data, Johnson then develops what he calls a "vision of the future" that his team can work to build.

And after that?

"Then I hit the road! I travel around talking to people in government, in the military, in universities, in industry; I try to focus not only on customers, but also a broader collection of companies and businesses. We talk about more than just the future of computers, we talk about the future of computation and where they see the world going. I ask: What do we need to do today? In 2015? In 2020? and let it evolve our thinking, it actually makes our vision for 2020 much more realistic. It’s a really iterative process.”

I was fascinated by the process, but given that Johnson has been at Intel for 10 years, I had to ask: has he ever been surprised by a trend?

"Yes," he says. "This is embarrassing, but I'll share it anyway. Back in 2004-2005, we were working on futurecasting for 2015. Not that long ago, right? But we were sure that the future of entertainment was going to be all about demand. On-demand movies. But when our researchers came back, we found that the number one thing that people wanted was access to the Internet. Because it afforded them more personalization and more than just on-demand. Basically, people were telling us, 'It's the Internet, stupid.

For us, this had huge implications. We realized we needed to work towards a computational platform that meaningfully combines TV with the personalization and choice of the Internet. That's much more complicated than on-demand."

A Rough Draft of 2020

Johnson and his team are currently working on futurecasting 2020. Obviously, it's not done yet. But I asked if I could get a "rough draft" of what we should be looking for. And one of the things he's modeling for the year 2020 is the "Secret Life of Data."

"Algorithms will talk to algorithms, machines will talk to machines, and humans won't be involved. When data takes on a life of it's own, what will that do? How will we remember that when that data comes back, it's ultimately meant for humans? It has to make our lives better. We can't forget that."

That's not all, he adds. There's also what he refers to as the "Ghost of Computing" - what happens when computers get so small that they disappear, and we have an entire world filled with computational intelligence?

These two factors add up to another thing that concerns Johnson about 2020: "The Future of Fear." When we have all these devices, all this hardware and software, people are going to start asking "what does it mean to be safe and secure in this world?"

"People are frightened about things that they don't have a lot of information about. I want to start a cultural conversation about what we should be afraid of and what we shouldn't. I want to avoid any new 'boogeymen.' We have to look at not only the future we want, but the future we don't want - and work as hard as we can to avoid it."